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Saturday, 14 November 2015

South East Bloggers Circle Meet-up

As you’ve probably seen,
I’ve been rather quiet on my blog recently. This is partly down to my health
not playing ball, but also because the little energy I have has been going
towards organising the first meet-up for the South East Bloggers Circle! I’ve
been really excited to tell you all about it properly, and now I can!

Just as a bit of a
backstory – I set up a Facebook group a couple of years ago, as I was
struggling to find bloggers in my local area. I also noticed there were a lot
of blogger meet-ups in London, but couldn’t find any a bit closer to home. The
group gradually grew (we are now at 130 members on the Facebook group, plus a
lot more following our Twitter handle @SEBlogCircle) and we changed our name from
Hants/Berks/Surrey Bloggers to the South East Bloggers Circle.

I’d wanted to organise a
meet-up for a while (I did help organise one with Festival Place, but was in
hospital so couldn’t go!), so at the beginning of this year I started making
some enquiries. The lovely people at Festival Place were
incredibly supportive, helping me to find a location, contact local companies
and finding other local bloggers to attend. Originally the meet-up was planned
for the summer, but due to various reasons it kept getting postponed. But last
Monday (9th November) it finally happened!

On Monday afternoon, my Dad
and I headed over to Festival Place with a car full of goodies. Pizza Express very kindly
allowed us to use their upstairs to host the gathering, so Dad and I started
setting up the room, with the help of some of their staff.

Soon after we arrived,
representatives from Bee Good and Lush Basingstoke turned up with bags full of treats – you could quite literally smell them
coming! Seeing them set up all their amazing products was so exciting, and I
started to relax a bit (I didn’t realise just how stressful organising a
meet-up would be!)

Bloggers then began turning
up, greeted at the door by my Dad with a name label (a bit sad, I know, but it
helped so much to know who everyone was!) It was so lovely to finally put some
faces to names and to meet the people behind the blogs/YouTube channels! Pizza
Express very kindly took orders for complimentary drinks for everyone and the
room was soon full of excited chatter and squeals of excitement from the Lush
and Bee Good tables.

After about an hour,
various pizzas, anti-pasti and doughballs began to appear on a long table. As
well as offering us complimentary drinks, the manager (Ricardo) of Pizza
Express was incredibly generous and put on a buffet for us – I’ve never seen so
much amazing food! Numerous photos were taken and we all stood there for a
while waiting for the first person to dig in! Unfortunately a few bloggers
weren’t able to make it on the night, but this did mean we had a lovely sized
group and were able to all sit round a big table and enjoy our meal together.

As if the delicious pizzas
weren’t enough, we then indulged in the most amazing salted caramel ice cream,
kindly donated to us by Jude’s Ice Cream.
I often lust over their tubs of ice cream when I go to the supermarket, but I’d
never got round to trying any until Monday. I can definitely say that I will be
buying some more!

Now in a bit of a food
coma, we got back to chatting and seeing what the visiting brands had to offer.
Lush did a few fun demonstrations (which definitely just made me want to buy
more!) and told us all about their awesome Christmas range. It was really good
being able to see their products out of their store, as you could really take
in the individual scents and the two ladies were so knowledgeable and full of
great tips and advice. They were also doing complimentary hand and arm
massages, which were just divine, especially after the amount of time and
energy I put in to organising the event!

It was then time for the
obligatory group photo. I handed out the cute goodie bags, given to us by Life Tonics, and we all
struck a pose in front of the Lush table. They were such a lovely group of
ladies, who really made the evening great.

Time was going so quickly
and people were starting to talk about getting home (it was a school night
after all!) when I remembered we had the charity raffle to do! We were donated
some fantastic prizes from some very generous companies, including Bill’s, Paul’sBoutique and Jilly Jilly Design.
All the money raised is going to the charity Mind, which is very close to my
heart. I’m planning to do a separate post about the prizes in the raffle and
what was inside our goodie bags, so keep your eyes peeled! I think the ladies
who won prizes were really happy with what they received, even if we did have
to keep pulling tickets out because one blogger kept winning!

By the end of the night I
was absolutely shattered, but also happy that it had gone so well. Despite all
the work and energy it took to organise everything, I think it was worth it. I’ve
had some lovely messages from the ladies who attended and they’re already
asking when the next meet-up will be! I would definitely like to organise more
in the future – they won’t all take on this format, some will be big and some
much smaller, but hopefully meeting up can become a regular thing for us, as I
had so much fun. We are really grateful to all the generous companies that
supported us with this event, and are always looking for other companies to
work with in the future.

If you’re a blogger in the
South East of England and fancy joining us, you can find our group on Facebook,
Twitter (@SEBlogCircle) and Instagram (@SE_Bloggers) – it would be great to see
you! If you’d like to be added to our database to hear about future events,
please drop me an e-mail on jaffacat44@gmail.com

Have you been to any good blogger
meet-ups? Are you in the South East and fancy joining us? What sort of meet-ups
would you like to see?

Hello and welcome...

to Ramblings of a Jaffa Cat! My name is Jenny, I'm 28 and live in Hampshire. I'm a huge fan of Disney, tea and The Simpsons. I love to talk about fashion, beauty, skincare and also raise awareness of mental and physical health problems. Contact me at jaffacat44@gmail.com